How to Set Owner of File Using PowerShell

To set or change the owner of a file using PowerShell, you can use the Set-Acl cmdlet.

The following method shows how to do it with syntax.

Method 1: Set the owner of a file using PowerShell

# Specify the path to the file
$filePath = "C:\temp\log\system_log.txt"

# Specify the new owner
$newOwner = "Administrator"

# Get the file's current ACL
$fileAcl = Get-Acl -Path $filePath

# Create a new security identifier (SID) for the new owner
$newOwnerSid = New-Object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount($newOwner)

$newOwnerSid = $newOwnerSid.Translate([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier])

# Set the owner in the file's ACL
$fileAcl.SetOwner($newOwnerSid)

# Apply the modified ACL to the file
Set-Acl -Path $filePath -AclObject $fileAcl

This example will set the owner of a file in PowerShell. It changes the security descriptor of the file.

The following example shows how to use this method.

How to Set the Owner of a File Using PowerShell

You can set the owner of a file or folder in PowerShell using the Set-Acl cmdlet. It involves changing the security descriptor of a file or descriptor.

PowerShell doesn’t have a built-in cmdlet for setting the owner directly, hence we will be using the .NET classes available in PowerShell to implement it.

# Specify the path to the file
$filePath = "C:\temp\log\system_log.txt"

# Specify the new owner
$newOwner = "Administrator"  

# Get the file's current ACL
$fileAcl = Get-Acl -Path $filePath

# Create a new security identifier (SID) for the new owner
$newOwnerSid = New-Object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount($newOwner)

$newOwnerSid = $newOwnerSid.Translate([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier])

# Set the owner in the file's ACL
$fileAcl.SetOwner($newOwnerSid)

# Apply the modified ACL to the file
Set-Acl -Path $filePath -AclObject $fileAcl

Output:

In this PowerShell script, the $filePath variable holds the path to the file you want to set or change owner. The $newOwner variable stores the new owner’s name.

$fileAcl variable stores the file’s current ACL retrieved using the Get-Acl cmdlet, later we created a new security identifier (SID) for the new owner and stored it in the $newOwnerSid variable.

Finally, we set the owner in the file’s ACL using the SetOwner method and applied the modified ACL to the file using the Set-Acl method.

Conclusion

I hope the above article on setting the owner of a file using PowerShell is helpful to you.

You can find more topics about Active Directory tools and PowerShell basics on the ActiveDirectoryTools home page.